


No Bones About It

by elle_stone



Series: Halloween Fright Fest 2018 [4]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bad Pick-Up Lines, F/M, Fluff, Halloween
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-11 01:41:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16466288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: She leans in closer, pretending to peer down into the depth of Clarke's apron pocket. "What is it? Note from a secret admirer?"Clarke imagines herself telling Raven that the skeleton is sending her love notes, and for some reason finds this image so hilarious that she bursts out laughing for real.In the weeks before Halloween, Clarke starts receiving anonymous notes featuring cheesy holiday pick-up lines. A modern coffee shop au.Nominated for Best Modern One Shot in the Bellarke Fan Work Awards 2018.





	No Bones About It

It is Clarke's job to arrange the skeleton. 

Also to hang the bats, drape the cobwebs over the windows, and place the witch figurines on top of the pastry display case—in short, to make the coffee shop delightfully spooky for Halloween. 

She's proud of her work on the specials board—the bubbling cauldron she drew under the announcement of the drink of the week—and of the pumpkins she's set on the windowsill. But the skeleton is her real masterpiece. She's sat him down at a table in the corner, and positioned him so that he's leaning forward, his skull in his hand, and staring straight at the cashiers. She's even given him a little costume of his own: a pirate hat and a vest and a patch over one eye, and she's thinking of acquiring a parrot for his shoulder, which will pull the whole look together in a pleasing way. 

She makes a final adjustment to the positioning of his legs, and then stands up, dusts off her hands, and turns around, aware without having to look that she is being watched. 

"How does he look?" she asks, and Bellamy startles. 

"What?" 

"Hello?" She waves her hand in the general direction of his face. He’s standing behind the counter, which makes the gesture more symbolic than useful. "The skeleton? Stop daydreaming, Blake. How does he look?" 

"Ha ha," Bellamy deadpans back at her. The far-off expression has dropped from his features, though, and he's able to look at the skeleton with a critical eye.  

Too critical, perhaps. 

"You don't like him," Clarke guesses. 

"No, I do. It's just..." He shrugs. "That's a table." 

Clarke glances behind her, pretending to be amazed. "So it is." 

"A table for customers." 

She crosses her arms and narrows her eyes at him. "Are you suggesting I buy the skeleton a coffee and a scone?" 

Whenever Bellamy breathes out hard, as he does now, like he's holding back a frustrated curse or two, his nostrils flare in a surprisingly cute way. "I _mean_ that someone might want to sit there." 

"Bellamy, no one is going to want to sit at this table!" She gestures at it widely, to emphasize its utter uselessness. "It's the crappiest one we have. It's squashed into the corner, it's barely big enough to hold a small latte, and that chair is wobbly.” 

Bellamy doesn't answer, but he doesn't look convinced either. Clarke has the distinct impression that he's biting down hard on a retort. 

"You just don't like that he's staring at you," she adds, and Bellamy snorts, and rolls his eyes, and doesn't tell her she's wrong. 

"If we get a crowd, I'm moving it," he says, instead, and points a warning figure right at the skeleton for emphasis. 

Clarke raises her hands in surrender, then lets them drop again to her sides. "Fair enough." She pats the skeleton on the shoulder and tells it, "You're on borrowed time, buddy." Then, deciding she is satisfied with the articulation of his limbs, she heads back behind the counter to put on her apron and prepare for her shift. 

"So," Bellamy says, as she grabs her nametag from the pile on the back shelf, "are you going to Miller's Halloween party?" 

The question comes off as so excessively casual that Clarke figures he must have rehearsed it in his head at least a dozen times, which is weird, because they're friends, and they've talked about Miller's annual Halloween bash plenty of times before. 

"Probably," she answers, joining him at the second cash register, pulling her hair out from under the apron ties as she does.  

"Probably?" he repeats. He sounds incredulous, and she considers asking him why he bothered with the question if he just assumed she would be there. They don’t usually do the small talk thing. They know each other too well for that. 

"Yeah. I mean—I want to go." She shrugs. "But," and she knows how this sounds, so she tries to make the words as light and as inconsequential as she can, "I don't have a date." 

Bellamy's staring at her, uncomprehending, and she busies herself with double checking the cash register so she can pretend she doesn’t notice. "It's not a couples’ event," he reminds her. 

"No, not officially, but all of our friends are paired up so, in actuality, it is very much a couples’ event." 

She sees Bellamy shrug out of the corner of her eye.  

"Yeah, well. I'm not in a couple." 

Clarke closes the cash register again with a bright, high click. "That's true," she says, and pats his arm in consolation. "I guess that means we'll _both_ be going alone." 

* 

Two days later, Clarke sticks her hand in the pocket of her apron and finds a small piece of paper, folded in two. She'd been wiping down tables, passing the time during the slow hour that always follows the early afternoon college student rush, and as soon as her fingers brush over the note, she forgets entirely why she'd reached into her pocket in the first place. 

She pulls out the scrap of paper, unfolds it, and reads. 

_No bones about it: you're boo-tiful!_  

 _-The Skeleton in the Corner_

Huh. 

She blinks down at the note, reads it again. She can feel a smile starting to grow across her face, and a warmth spreading through her chest. What a cute, strange, random message to find so suddenly on her person. 

After a moment, she looks toward the corner, and sees that her skeleton is exactly where she placed him on Friday, except that he's been repositioned so that his hands are over his heart. His aspect now is less 'fierce pirate' and more 'lovestruck fool.' And that does it. She turns away and puts her hand over her mouth, not wanting to chance that someone might see her grin.  

_No bones about. You're boo-tiful._ It's so dumb. But—also—oddly sweet. And she doesn't want to have to explain it, or joke about it, or even share it. She wants the message to be only for her.  

And the skeleton, perhaps. 

And— 

She glances over to the counter. Bellamy is at the register, handing a customer back her change. But he seems to sense he's being watched, so he flicks his gaze in Clarke's direction, and, when he catches her eye, he smiles. 

And maybe, Clarke thinks, one other person, too. 

* 

Clarke has long preferred her shifts with Bellamy over all other shifts, even those she shares with other members of their group. This is because, at some undefined point over the last year, he's ceased to be simply her co-worker, or even just her friend. He’s become her best friend: the person she feels the most comfortable with, the one with whom she is most eager to share all of the good and the bad in her life, the one she always looks forward to seeing, no matter how short a span of time they've spent apart. 

But now she anticipates their shared shifts in a new way, because she knows that’s when she'll find a new note in her apron pocket. 

She checks every time she puts the apron on, just in case, but she knows when to get her hopes up and when the search is a lost cause. When there is a note, she never reads it right away. She saves it, building up a thrill of anticipation, daring herself to delay the moment when she'll unfold the little piece of paper, scan the short message inside, and feel that burst of silly, pleasant, silent laughter bloom up inside her chest. 

_Are you a ghost? Because you’ve been haunting my dreams._

_I’ve got some wicked feelings brewing for you._

_I’d ask you out, but I don’t have the guts._

On Wednesday, when Bellamy leaves an hour before her and Raven takes over in his stead, she comes very closer to being caught, quietly giggling at _You must be a zombie, because you’re drop-dead gorgeous_ while Raven adds milk to a medium latte. "You should be doing this, you know," Raven says, glancing back over her shoulder. "You're the only one who can actually make that latte art." 

"Hmm?" Clarke answers, and doesn’t look up. 

Raven sets the latte on the counter and calls out the order number, then turns on her heel and pokes Clarke squarely on the upper arm. "Hello, what's so funny?" 

Clarke shoves the slip of paper back in her pocket. "Nothing." 

“Mmmhmm,” Raven answers, a low, judgmental murmur that makes it clear she’s unconvinced. "Right. That’s why you're doing that laughing-under-your-breath thing." She leans in closer, pretending to peer down into the depth of Clarke's apron pocket. "What is it? Note from a secret admirer?" 

Clarke imagines herself telling Raven that the skeleton is sending her love notes, and for some reason finds this image so hilarious that she bursts out laughing for real. 

This does nothing to sate Raven's curiosity, but luckily, her interrogation is cut short by Monty, who passes three more drink orders their way and promptly distracts them both. 

* 

Clarke doesn't know if the skeleton's come-ons are supposed to be serious. 

Sometimes she thinks they are. Sometimes, when she and Bellamy get off work at the same time, and head outside together, and the air is crisp and clean and cool and the leaves on the sidewalk crunch under their feet, and she looks over at him and catches him looking at her. When his expression is so soft and so warm that she feels adored in the glow of it, and adores him in turn. When she asks _what? why are you looking at me like that?_ and he twists up his mouth for a moment like he's about to snap some retort but then stops himself, and says instead, _you look really nice today_ , and she smiles and feels herself begin to blush. Then she thinks he might be, really— 

Most of the time, though, she tells herself that he's just joking around. 

On the Thursday before Halloween, she’s running so late for her evening shift that Monty has to stay a full fifteen minutes late to cover for her. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry," she murmurs under her breath, as she slides up behind him at the second register, ready to take over, the strings on her apron still untied and her hair trapped against the collar of her shirt. 

"It's all right," he answers, slipping neatly out of her way. "You'll just owe me your first born in exchange." 

"Very funny," Clarke mutters back at him, then turns back to smile brightly at the next customer in line. 

For the rest of the evening, she is so busy that she cannot spare a second to _think_ about the note in her pocket, let alone check to see if it’s there. Neither she nor Bellamy has time for anything at all but taking orders, slinging pastries, and counting out change. Now that the sun is setting early, and the nights are turning cold, the coffee shop has become a bright and warm and festive oasis in the middle of the street, and it attracts a crowd so large that, any moment now, Bellamy will probably have no choice but to move the smitten skeleton from his perch. 

All of this is good for business. But it’s decidedly bad for catching one's breath. 

Finally, the customers clear out, and so do most of the employees, and it's only Clarke and Bellamy and Jasper left to clean up. Clarke flips the sign on the door from _Open_ to _Closed_ with a tired sigh. Bellamy is counting up the money in the register and Jasper is wiping down tables, and the only sounds are the quiet jangle of coins, the occasional scrape of a bumped table leg grating against the floor, the quiet strains of the radio they haven't yet turned off. 

Clarke has started to stack up the trays and plates left on top of the trash cans when she hears, behind her, an unexpected, "What's this?" 

She turns. Jasper is standing by the table with the skeleton. He's holding a folded piece of paper in his hand. He's also wearing Clarke's usual apron, the one with the permanent marker stain at the corner of the pocket.  

Clarke flicks her gaze over to Bellamy. He seems frozen, a pile of quarters in his hands that he's not even pretending to count, and his face has started to look a little pale. 

"I don't have a costume for the party on Saturday," Jasper reads. "Can I go as your boyfriend? The Skeleton in the Corner." He pauses, a deep furrow between his eyebrows. Looks at the skeleton, then back to the note. "I guess he didn't get the message that I'm already taken, huh?" he says.  

When the other two don’t respond, not even to laugh with him at the strange and unexpected contents of the note, Jasper looks up again. He glances first at Clarke and then at Bellamy, takes in their stricken faces and how neither will quite meet the other’s eye, and the situation clicks. An awkward silence unfurls. 

To break it, Jasper clears his throat and adds, "But I don't think this was meant for me anyway. Um—here." He takes a few strides across the room and hands the note to Clarke. "This looks like a situation that doesn't need me, so I'm just gonna..." He points to the door, then proceeds to make himself as scarce as possible, as quickly as possible: throwing the rag he was using on the tables in the direction of the sink, taking off his apron, grabbing his jacket and heading out the back way. 

"See you two later," he says, as he lets in a small gust of chill October air. "Miller's on Saturday, right? Yes? Yes? Cool! Okay, bye!"  

The door closes behind him, and the warmth of the cozy little shop presses around them again. The radio suddenly seems unaccountably loud. Clarke's still holding the note in her hand.  

Bellamy lets the coins tumble back into the register drawer. "So," he says. 

Clarke looks down at the piece of paper again. "I thought you were going as an alien," she says, as she slips it into her pocket. 

Bellamy laughs, but the sound is light and forced, like he's trying to seem much more at ease than he is. He makes his way around to the front of the counter, which barely closes the space still between them at all. "Yeah, well. When did you figure out it was me?" 

"Pretty much from the beginning," Clarke answers. "Like you said—you're not part of a couple. And you're pretty much the only one, besides me, so...it was either you or some random, creepy stranger." She's started to walk closer, slowly, sliding around the tables and chairs in her way. When they're face to face, she adds, "Or maybe it was just wishful thinking." 

Bellamy's staring at her like he hardly understands what she's saying, like he was bracing himself for gentle rejection and this, her soft voice and her brave eyes, simply doesn't match up with the expected script. Clarke herself is too aware of her body, of her lungs and her heart and her limbs; she tells herself that if Bellamy doesn't speak soon, she'll run. But she can't, because she's frozen. She tells herself to trust her senses and her gut. It wasn't a joke. Not with the way he's looking at her. She knows this but then—why won't he speak? 

"You liked them, then?" he asks. “The notes?” 

"Yeah." She smiles, genuine and warm, and reaches out to touch his arm. Her fingers slide down his sleeve and end up at his hand. "I thought they were cute." 

His fingers lace through his fingers, and he pulls her closer. 

"They were cheesy," he says. 

"Cheesy but cute. Come on—wasn't that what you were going for?" 

They're standing chest to chest now, both their hands linked, fingers playing against fingers. Clarke stretches up on her toes so she can look him in the eye.  

"Actually," he answers, "I was hoping for this." 

"For this?" she repeats, prompting him with a wiggle of her eyebrows. 

"You. A date to Miller's party. And…maybe a kiss." 

"I think all that can be arranged," Clarke says, low and soft and close, as she leans in and presses her lips softly to his. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> This story has an accompanying moodboard [on my tumblr](http://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/post/179434448650/no-bones-about-it-bellarke-2700-words-coming).


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